BRM Reviews the 2/13/2017 Raw

[Big Red Machine]

OPENING SEGMENT- dull
Steph comes out and says that she “gave Foley the week off,” with the implication being that she is unhappy with things and he had better start doing what she wants when he comes back next week or else.
Roman Reigns came out, so we’ve got public enemies number one and two in the same place, and we just heard that number three won’t be here tonight. Maybe this will be the last time we see Steph or Roman on this show so it can actually be enjoyable?
Roman says he doesn’t want to wait until Fastlane to face Strowman. Steph that she’ll ask the audience. They want to see the match tonight, duh. She spins this as the fans not caring about Roman, which, of course, gets a huge pop. Steph claims that she won’t book the match because she does care about Roman and she assumes that Roman is injured after getting beaten up last week. Roman says he doesn’t care but Steph tells him it’s too bad because she already booked Strowman vs. Mark Henry. Roman basically outright says that he’ll interfere in the match so Steph threatens to take away his match with Strowman at Fastlane and not book him at WrestleMania. Again, the crowd cheers.
Roman starts to say something but he is interrupted by Gallows and Anderson who volunteer to beat Roman up two-on-one for disrespecting Steph. In honor of Teddy Long, Steph books a handicap match because apparently Vince wasn’t the only one supposedly not watching Smackdown for all of those years.

HANDICAP MATCH: Roman Reigns vs. Luke Gallows & Karl Anderson- 2/10
Roman beats the tag champs up on his own for a while until they get themselves DQed for not obeying the five-count after making a tag. They still attack Roman but he beats them up two-on-one, because it’s not like the tag champ should be made to look credible or anything.

BO DALLAS vs. KOFI KINGSTON (w/Xavier Woods & Big E.)- DUD!
Bo has a beard. New Day have owls on their tights, which makes perfect sense, but it keeps making me do a double-take because it looks WAY too much like the new TNA Anthem logo. New Day say that if they win they will reveal their blueprints for ice cream. Bo ripped their blueprints in half. F*ck this sh*t. They then wanted me to believe that these blueprints being ripped up was giving Bo a psychological edge. Kofi still won and New Day poured Booty-Os into Bo’s mouth while he was unconscious because they’re assholes.

NEVILLE & GALLAGHER BACKSTAGE INTERVIEW SEGMENT- I can’t wait to see Neville kick this annoying geek’s head off.

JACK GALLAGHER vs. NOAM DAR (w/Alicia Fox)- 3.75/10
They do some fun British style stuff and then Gallagher hits his headbutt and his running dropkick and wins. Then Neville comes out because apparently putting them in a backstage segment a few minutes ago wasn’t enough.

EMMALINA PROMO- she’s decided she wants to be Emma again or something. This whole thing has cumulatively been a huge waste of time.

CHARLY CARUSO INTERVIEWS BAYLEY- great promo by Bayley.

OWENS & JERICHO BACKSTAGE- Hunter shows up and wants to talk to Owens. Alone.

Cena is getting his rematch against Bray tomorrow. Should be good.

MARK HENRY vs. BRAUN STROWMAN- 4/10
Braun Strowman threw a dropkick. This was a really fun big-man match for the time it got.

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- meh.
If there is anything that could have possibly made Roman beating both tag champs on his own even more annoying, it’s the fact that announcers are now pushing the fact that he was still hurt from Strowman’s attack last week when he did so. Roman came out and brawled with Braun but Braun won so at least they’ve got some sense and aren’t going to kill all of the heat for this match on TV before the match ever happens.

SHEAMUS, CESARO, BAYLEY, ENZO, & CASS BACKSTAGE- dull
Wait, no. Now Bayley’s gone. Way to make the woman challenging for the title in your main event look irrelevant. Enzo & Cass were really annoying here. Especially Enzo.

MICHAEL COLE’S SIT-DOWN INTERVIEW WITH SAMOA JOE- great

SAMI ZAYN vs. RUSEV (w/Lana)- 6.25/10
Surprising upset win for Sami! Charly interviewed him after the match and he cut a good promo. It looks like they’re building Sami up to feed him to Joe. Yup. Now here is Joe coming out from behind like a coward. Believe it or not that really does make heel Joe as unlikable as he should be. He beat Sami up.

TEDDY LONG HALL OF FAME VIDEO PACKAGE- snore.

AKIRA TOZAWA vs. ARIYA DAIVRI- 3/10
Kendrick is on commentary now as well as Aries. I that at this point we can give Daivari the official nickname “The Jobberweight.”

THE FESTIVAL OF FRIENDSHIP- a f*cking PERFECT segment!
Jericho has this elaborate thing set up with showgirls and goofy outfit… and Owens clearly doesn’t care about his pageantry at all. Jericho gives him a $7,000 sculpture that Owens clearly doesn’t appreciate but he’s really trying to do his best not to hurt Jericho’s feelings.
Then Jericho reveals the next gift, which is a painting of them with Jericho in the role of Adam and Owens in the role of G-d in Michelangelo’s Creation of Adam. Jericho suggests that Owens hang it up in his house, but Owens notes that he can’t do that because “You’re not even wearing any pants! I’ve got kids, man!”
Owens kept getting more and more fed up with Jericho’s stuff, including “Friendship the Magician” and Owens kept doing a worse and worse job of keeping his frustration in. Jericho says that his final present to Owens is to make sure that Goldberg doesn’t make it to Fastlane, so he’s calling Goldberg out right now. I figured going into this that either no one would come out because Goldberg wasn’t here, or else we were going to get midget Goldberg who Jericho would make fun of. What we got was someone whose existence I had completely forgotten about: GILLBERG! The professional diet-sized Goldberg!
Owens quickly beat up Gillberg, but then expressed his frustration with Jericho because he thought Jericho was actually going to help him beat up the real Goldberg. Jericho apologized to Owens that this what Owens was expecting… but then he gave this wonderful heartfelt speech about their friendship and vowed to help Owens beat Goldberg at the PPV just like he has with everyone else and they made up and Owens gave Jericho a gift: a new list. Jericho said he loved it and I was about to write about big thing about how great these two are because this is at least the second or third time they’ve done this had me convinced they were going to break up by they didn’t and then Jericho asked “why is my name on this list?” and he lifted it up and we all saw that the back said “The List of KO” and Owens attacked Jericho and it was AMAZING. Now Owens is smashing the gifts that Jericho got him and holy sh*t was this a masterwork of making you feel bad for Owens at first that Jericho wasn’t taking things seriously and then turning that all on its head because you knew that, despite the fact that he clearly doesn’t quite understand that he and Owens have different outlooks on life, Jericho really did put in a lot of effort to put this all together for Owens and he really meant it when he said that Owens was his best friend and now Kevin Owens has turned on him. Phenomenal!

When we came back from commercial we saw Jericho getting loaded into an ambulance.

ENZO & CASS PROMO- decent

CESARO (w/Sheamus) vs. ENZO AMORE (w/Colin Cassady)- DUD!
Short and ugly.

Today’s Black History Month video claimed that Rosa Parks “singlehandedly started the civil rights movement,” which is completely false on so many levels. And yet, the more I think about it the more it doesn’t shock me that WWE would say this because that sort of simplification and ignoring of the forces and atmospheres operating behind the scenes is such a WWE way to look at history.

SASHA AND CHARLOTTE BACKSTAGE- fine.

WWE WOMEN’S TITLE MATCH: Charlotte(c) vs. Bayley- 7.75/10
Between Cole’s commentary and Bayley’s earlier promo it seems like everyone has forgotten that Bayley was also in the Women’s Title match at Clash of Champions. The match was really great. Charlotte worked over Bayley’s head and neck a lot, including some bumps early on that looked legitimately painful.
I’m not going to lie: I pop huge for Dana Brooke whenever she shows up in Charlotte’s matches simply because the bookers have decided to remember her existence this week. That whole finishing sequence with Dana and Sasha getting involved was really clever as it sets some interesting possibilities up for Sasha in particular.

There was a lot of dull stuff on this week’s Raw and a lot of stuff I didn’t really like, but the three big notes they were pushing the hardest- the Joe interview, the Festival of Friendship, and the Women’s Title match all came through in a big way and thus this still feels like it was a really good show.

[cero2k]

I haven't liked RAW in like 4 yrs, but i really liked the JeriKO segment. the heel just turned heel! and the last thing that went into the List of Jericho ended up being 'Friendship'

https://streamable.com/1v7p8

[Big Red Machine]

I haven't liked RAW in like 4 yrs, but i really liked the JeriKO segment. the heel just turned heel! and the last thing that went into the List of Jericho ended up being 'Friendship'

https://streamable.com/1v7p8

It was a truly brilliant segment, and it gives me some hope that maybe they'll try to protect Owens at Fastlane via Jericho showing up. I also like that this is now the second time Owens has turned on a best friend, fueling that narrative in the overall story of Kevin Owens.

[KILLdozer]

Hulu doesn't show any Cruiserweight stuff ever...Or the new day... I actually forget they exist until reading your reviews.

[KILLdozer]

Cole called it an "enziguiri" when Rusev clearly roundhoused Zayn in the head...

[cero2k]

It was a truly brilliant segment, and it gives me some hope that maybe they'll try to protect Owens at Fastlane via Jericho showing up. I also like that this is now the second time Owens has turned on a best friend, fueling that narrative in the overall story of Kevin Owens.

while not necessarily protect him, i do think now that Owens may retain due to DQ

[KILLdozer]

I completely agree though... I'm positive Enzo Amore is next on our "list of things we love to mutually hate endlessly and massively together"...

Idk what they're going for with either of those dudes; Cassidy and Amore.

As you said they're pretty much always aggravating or just in nonsense backwards stuff... Cassidy caused the disqualification in the the title match last week... Because Gallows kicked Amore so he kicked Gallows...Even though, even though, Amore in question was just being his overall annoying self. Doesn't he know that running your mouth in wrestling pretty much always gets people in physical trouble?

The gimmick's been one stale recycled cliche after another for a while now, but Hulu also actually cut their entire involvement out as well-so hey, no new day, no Cassidy and Amore...What a great show!

[cero2k]

I completely agree though... I'm positive Enzo Amore is next on our "list of things we love to mutually hate endlessly and massively together"...

i think we're kinda already there, at least in the case of Cass, i've heard a lot of people didn't like him being pushed and a lot of people aren't liking the small dog/big dog thing they're doing

[KILLdozer]

I completely agree though... I'm positive Enzo Amore is next on our "list of things we love to mutually hate endlessly and massively together"...

i think we're kinda already there, at least in the case of Cass, i've heard a lot of people didn't like him being pushed and a lot of people aren't liking the small dog/big dog thing they're doing

I'm not in any way sold on the whole "Long Island" stereotype they're constantly perpuating, and Cassidy's accent is the worst thing about it. He's nowheres near muscular enough for the role he's playing, which doesn't help. That brings me to Baron Corbin actually...Maybe a discussion for this week's Smackdown, but... Not much definition...Scrappy edges of a beard....Aaaannnddd, that horrible receding hairline. This dude doesn't look any badder than fresh milk.